[CW] FCC relases 71 page NPRM

[David J. Ring, Jr.]

>From the CQ Newsroom...

In a massive 71-page Notice of Proposed Rule Making, the FCC today made
several proposals for rule changes in the Amateur Service, including a
proposal to adopt the ARRL's two-year-old "Novice refarming" petition; to
allow hams to designate a club they wish to receive their callsign after
they die; to include narrow-band fax transmissions (500 Hz maximum
bandwidth) in CW/data subbands; and to permit auxiliary operation in the
2-meter band, effectively legalizing Kenwood's "Sky Command" system for
using a dual-band handheld or mobile radio to remotely control an HF
transceiver. The proposal would also eliminate the prohibition on
commercially-manufactured linear amplifiers able to operate in the 12-meter
and 10-meter ham bands.

The League's refarming petition calls for giving Novices and Technicians
with code credit access to all General Class CW frequencies in the 80, 40,
15, and 10 meter bands; then expanding phone subbands to occupy the former
Novice/Tech-Plus CW bands.

The Notice also proposed several additional minor changes, made a few
immediate changes to bring the rules into conformance with current FCC
practice, and denied several other petitions that had been pending. It did
not address any of the 18 petitions to change the current code test
requirements and/or add a new entry-level license class with HF privileges.

The complete NPRM is available online in Word, PDF, or text format at the
following addresses:
Word: <http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-79A1.doc>
PDF: <http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-79A1.pdf>
Text: <http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-04-79A1.txt>

Comment deadline is June 15, with reply comments due by June 30. A summary
of the proposed changes will appear in the June issue of CQ, with a detailed
analysis in July's "Washington Readout" column.